EGYPT: Egyptian antiquities officials announced on Thursday that they discovered a hidden corridor close to the main entrance of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza.
Scientists discovered the nine-metre (30-feet) corridor using non-invasive technology as part of the Scan Pyramids project that started in 2015.
The Great Pyramid of Giza, built as a monumental tomb around 2560 BC, is the only remaining of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Mostafa Waziri, who is the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, explained that the builders likely created the unfinished corridor to redistribute the weight of the pyramid either around the main entrance or another undiscovered chamber or space.
He also stated that they will continue scanning the area to uncover more information about what is beneath the corridor or at the end of it.
Scientists detected the corridor through cosmic-ray muon radiography before using a 6mm-thick endoscope from Japan to retrieve images of it by feeding it through a tiny joint in the pyramid’s stones.
The discovery of the corridor adds to the 2017 announcement by Scan Pyramids researchers that they found a void at least 30 metres long inside the Great Pyramid, the first significant inner structure found since the 19th century.
It is possible that the pharaoh had more than one burial chamber, and five rooms atop the king’s burial chamber in another part of the pyramid are also thought to have been built to redistribute the weight of the massive structure.
